By Paul Eckert
2015-07-24
Tibetan demonstrators urge the IOC to reject the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics bid in a protest in Lausanne, Switzerland, June 10, 2015.
AFP
A group of Chinese intellectuals on Friday called on the International Olympic Committee to reject Beijing’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing, arguing that China failed to keep the promises of openness and press freedom it made for the 2008 Summer Games and that conditions have only gotten worse since.
The IOC members will vote on July 31 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to decide whether Beijing or Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
A widening crackdown on lawyers and human rights defenders, deepening repression in Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang and growing intolerance to press freedom make Beijing a poor candidate, said a letter to the IOC signed by scores of prominent Chinese activists.
“We feel utterly ashamed of such a notorious human rights record, which not only contradicts Beijing’s own promises, but also severely tarnishes the reputation and spirit of the Olympic Games,” ,” the letter said..
“As Chinese nationals and former citizens, we urge you to reject Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics as China is now facing a human rights crisis with a scale of violations that is unprecedented since 2008,” it said.
Among signatories are Chinese students in the U.S., Canada and Australia, China-based dissidents Hu Jia and Du Yanlin and include exiled human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, lawyer Teng Biao, and economists He Qinglian and Xia Yeliang. Many of the signatories have been forced to live in exile for their political views or activism.
“If the International Olympic Committee awards Beijing the 2022 Winter Olympics, a great event intended to promote solidarity, brotherhood and human development will once again serve a corrupt dictatorship. It will endorse a government that blatantly violates human rights,” said the letter.
“Awarding Beijing the Olympics is a contradiction of the Olympics’ goal of “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”
A “mockery” of Olympic principles
To win the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China made promises of unprecedented openness and tolerance but quickly “a mockery of the fine principles that the Olympics stands for, and brought more humiliation than dignity and more sadness than joy to the people in China,” the letter said.